Covering a randomly selected song every day for a year, between my 39th and 40th birthdays.
FOR GREAT JUSTICE!

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Saturday, October 9, 2010

205. "Yer Blues" by The Beatles

Requested by Kevin Studyvin.

This was recorded and posted (barely!) on what would have been John Lennon's 70th birthday. I put a limit on the requests that they could only be Lennon compositions. In spite of and because of this, there was a record number of requests, with several people coming down in favor of this tune.

Today I have read, in the press and on numerous postings on that social nettwerk thing, a lot of words about John Lennon. Many of them have been extremely moving... not surprisingly, mostly the ones which tally with my understanding and experience of the man and his work. Some have been utter dross or worse; Lennon is just one of those guys many of whose ardent followers just don't get. It seems easy for people to reduce and simplify him to something he wasn't, which amazes me, because some of the stuff that makes him so fascinatingly complicated is so very difficult to just wave away. But people do. I know the world needs another Lennon-Christ comparison like it needs another working class hero, but there it, glaringly, obviously, glaringly obviously is.

For that reason I'm glad to have done one of John's difficult or confrontational numbers (leaving aside that a lot of his popular and poorly-understood songs also have subversively confrontational aspects) because that was a large part of who and what the guy was: a challenger of received wisdom. And I do believe that the streamlined version of his story being passed around by so many people today would be high on the list of received wisdom he'd be eager to debunk... hell, he had started that process before The Beatles were even over.

So this may not be the best Lennon cover you hear today, but I hope that it gets at a little something about the man that a lot of other covers will be happy to gloss over.

Personnel:

Rex Broome: Backing track, male rock vocal

Genevieve Broome: Female rock vocal, successfuly weaseling out of playing a guitar solo that she totally could have torn up and she knows it, too

1 comment:

"I don't believe in Lennon" would have been in any version of "God" he'd have done recently. Of course, the whole worshipful thing is partly because he's dead: had he lived, it's entirely possible he would have done a few more stupid-ass things along with the several more honorable, difficult, right-minded things.